Chapter 9: Journalist at large.—1868-1876.
Through Oliver Johnson, Garrison becomes a regular contributor to the New York independent, and writes much for that and for many other papers, chiefly upon the following topics: the Freedmen (p. 237), Temperance (p. 239), the rights of women (p. 242), National politics (p. 258), free Trade and civil-service Reform (p. 262). he also makes many contributions to the history of the anti-slavery cause, and is entreated to undertake his autobiography, but in vain. He celebrates rather his deceased coadjutors in funeral addresses or in obituary notices; nor does he omit to praise the survivors.With renewed health, Mr. Garrison again tried to face the task of writing a History of the Anti-Slavery Movement; but an invitation to become a regular paid contributor to the New York Independent, with liberty to write as often as he chose, and to select his own topics, proved irresistibly attractive. His name was attached to all his articles, and he practically enjoyed all the freedom and opportunity of utterance which the Liberator had afforded him, with none of the responsibility and drudgery of editorial life. Moreover, he now addressed sixty thousand readers instead of twenty-five hundred. ‘You will speak,’ wrote Oliver Johnson, who had become1 the associate editor of the Independent, ‘to a great audience, to many of whom your real sentiments are hardly known, and some of whom, doubtless, are filled with prejudice against you.’ And a few weeks later he wrote:2 ‘One of the very best and ablest of our orthodox ministers expressed himself as highly delighted with your articles, and said they were not only specimens of fine English, but pervaded by an eminently noble and Christian spirit.’ In the hundred articles which he contributed to that paper during the next seven or eight years, Mr. Garrison discussed all the reforms and topics of the day which attracted him, whether pertaining to the freedmen and the reconstruction problem, temperance, the rights of women, peace, popular religion, or the issues of the two Presidential campaigns. Nor was his active interest in these by any means confined to writing about them in
